Vaccine hesitancy in the US throughout the pandemic has revealed inconsistent results. This systematic review has compared COVID-19 vaccine uptake across US and investigated predictors of vaccine hesitancy and acceptance across different groups. A search of PUBMED database was conducted till 17th July, 2021. Articles that met the inclusion criteria were screened and 65 studies were selected for a quantitative analysis. The overall vaccine acceptance rate ranged from 12 to 91.4%, the willingness of studies using the 10-point scale ranged from 3.58 to 5.12. Increased unwillingness toward COVID-19 vaccine and Black/African Americans were found to be correlated. Sex, race, age, education level, and income status were identified as determining factors of having a low or high COVID-19 vaccine uptake. A change in vaccine acceptance in the US population was observed in two studies, an increase of 10.8 and 7.4%, respectively, between 2020 and 2021. Our results confirm that hesitancy exists in the US population, highest in Black/African Americans, pregnant or breastfeeding women, and low in the male sex. It is imperative for regulatory bodies to acknowledge these statistics and consequently, exert efforts to mitigate the burden of unvaccinated individuals and revise vaccine delivery plans, according to different vulnerable subgroups, across the country.

Populations of common mynas introduced to Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Hawaii, and South Africa from India during the last century were compared genetically with the extant native population using isozyme electrophoresis of 39 presumptive loci. Average heterozygosity, mean number of alleles/locus, and the percentage of polymorphic loci are lower in the introduced populations, and the 18% loss of alleles involves only alleles that are rare in the native population. The native population is only weakly subdivided genetically (F = 0.032) whereas the introduced populations are much more differentiated (F = 0.123), and the mean genetic distance among them is significantly greater than among native samples. The reduction in mean number of alleles/locus and average heterozygosity is greatest in the South African population, consistent with a very small effective size in the founder population. In the introduced populations, random drift is implicated by the different subsets of polymorphic loci they possess, by their greater variance in allele frequencies, and by shifts either side of the native means. It is concluded that in the evolutionarily short period of 100-120 years, bottlenecks and random drift have promoted genetic shifts equal to those between different subspecies of birds.

The abundance and seasonality of invertebrates were studied in 3 forest communities near Wellington, New Zealand by pitfall trapping at equal intensity for 14 months. Of 238 species trapped (93 461 individuals), 172 (50 204) occurred in mixed broadleaf-podocarp, 98 (23 072) in hard beech (Nothofagus truncata), and 107 (20 185) in silver beech (Nothofagus menziesil) forest. The composition of the invertebrate fauna differed amongst forest communities. Although many invertebrates were active throughout the year, significantly more were caught in autumn, and fewest in winter. The temporal distribution of several species was correlated positively with temperature, but very few species showed a correlation with rainfall. More species and individuals occurred in the more botanically diverse broadleaf-podocarp forest than in the beech forests. Species composition was more diverse in the lowland broadleaf-podocarp forest than in the high-altitude silver beech forest.

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